Despite remarkable advances in medicine, marked disparities in health and disease persist for certain segments of America's population. In spite of vigorous efforts to improve and invest in education, these same groups of Americans remain educationally disadvantaged and underrepresented in medicine. Studies have shown that physicians from underrepresented minority groups, especially African American and Hispanic Americans, are more likely to serve their respective underserved communities. Increasing the number of minority physicians will not only ensure that the medical profession will reflect the diversity of America, but also it will be an effective force against health disparities. This Kansas University Medical Center Minority Student Endowment fund would enable us to attract more minority students (including all those in the Greater Kansas City area, which may be Kansas or Missouri residents) and increase the number of competitive minority students who matriculate at Kansas by offering merit-based scholarships. Further, the Endowment fund would enable us to strengthen our academic support services and thereby improve progression rates for minority students. This would also result in reducing the debt burden at graduation and enhance student self-esteem and future success. We propose to offer increasing amounts of scholarships from the income produced by the Funds over a five-year period. Early in the course of the fund a higher percentage of the fund income wilt be devoted to building academic support services and then as the fund program becomes more well known, we would expect to direct more of the income to scholarships for increasingly competitive minority students. The Endowment Fund would be managed by the Kansas University Endowment Association, an independent non-profit organization recognized by the University as the official foundation for raising and managing private funds on behalf of the institution.